New & Noteworthy

SGD Help Video: Gene Name Reservation

July 13, 2015

The eminent Drosophila geneticist Michael Ashburner famously said: “Biologists would rather share their toothbrush than share a gene name.” It’s true that assigning names to genes is often a sticky subject.

In the Saccharomyces cerevisiae community we’re very lucky to have well-defined guidelines for genetic nomenclature, an established system for reserving gene names, and criteria for making them “standard,” or official, names. This system was agreed upon by yeast researchers nearly two decades ago and has served the community well.

Take a look at this video to get an overview of how the gene naming system works. And as always, please contact us with any questions or suggestions.